


Thunder Clatter

by Lyricality



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: But also because both Skids and Rung have suffered unpleasantness in the past, Dubious Science, In that all heatfics imply a certain amount of dubious consent, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Mildly Dubious Consent, Other, Past Rape/Non-con, Praise Kink, Rung is not prepared for any of this, background Ratchet/Drift
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-10-05
Packaged: 2020-09-26 15:15:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20391790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyricality/pseuds/Lyricality
Summary: InSlimReaper'sThe Chemicals Between Us,Ratchet's long-overdue heat triggers the heat cycles of twenty-seven additional mecha onboard theLost Light.Skids and Rung just happen to be two very unlucky casualties.A Skids/Rung heatfic set in the world ofThe Chemicals Between Us,posted with SlimReaper's permission.  All credit and praise goes to her!  This is her playground, and she has been generous enough to let me roll around in it for a while. <3





	1. Part 1

“_Old age and treachery always overcomes youth and skill.”_

_~Unknown_

Part I

Rung had an office full of datapads and only minutes to gather up the most critical of them before returning straight to the medbay. He thanked himself, a little immodestly, for his own dedication to organization. His filing system made for easy identification of the pertinent research, and in another few moments, he had extracted the relevant patient notes as well. Right now, the _Lost Light’s_ medical team could treat only the physically injured that kept arriving in waves, but once the domino effect of heat cycles and resultant heat-fights subsided...

Well, Rung expected a full schedule of mechs dealing with the emotional fallout.

Rung could only shudder to think how he would feel, were he in Ratchet’s place.

Fortunately, that would have been unlikely even without the dose of prophylactic that First Aid had administered before activating Rung’s backup medical coding. Only once in his long, long memory had Rung ever gone into heat, and given how unpleasant the experience had been, he was bitterly grateful that nothing had triggered a cycle since. Pity that his _dysfunction_ had given the Functionists something else over which to obsess. He could have happily done without another series of invasive and ultimately fruitless tests.

He juggled half a dozen datapads from one arm to the other as he deactivated the overhead lights in his office and locked the door behind him. The medbay wasn’t far, but it required a trip in the lift, and something deep in Rung’s chest still coiled tight and terrified whenever he entered that narrow compartment. 

_You’re all right,_ he told himself. _You’re safe._

He steadied his steps and hurried down the hall. He could remind himself innumerable times that the sparkeater was dead, but in his worst moments, when panic tightened his intakes and left him gasping, he had to draw on specific sensory memories: an effortless grasp pulling him free of danger, a powerful frame supporting his own. A wry smile, warm despite the strain at its edges.

That last memory had nothing to do with safety. Rung shifted the weight of the datapads and reminded himself to stop being an idiot.

His attention had truly wandered, he realized with dismay. Not only hadn’t he reached the lift, but this hallway was not at all familiar. He forced himself to a halt. Glancing around at the walls provided no clue as to either his location or his reason for heading this direction in the first place, so he pinged the computer and called up the ship’s map. This corridor appeared to lead nowhere in particular, unless Rung were inclined to call the oil reservoir a destination. Why had he turned this way? The atmosphere in this hallway seemed peculiar. Weighted, somehow. The seams in the wall plating wavered oddly as he passed them.

...When had he started walking again?

Rung stopped. Then he actually staggered another half step forwards before planting his feet on the tiles of the floor. “What...?” He trailed off into silence, because now he could hear something, faintly, at the edge of his audial range. It sounded like...clanging, or maybe like shouting, or maybe a disturbing mixture of the two, and it was growing louder by the moment.

Probably because he was walking toward it again. Investigation seemed inevitable, and Rung couldn’t quite summon up a proper level of outrage against the betrayal of his own body.

The door to the oil reservoir gaped open, and Rung glimpsed flashes of movement in the space beyond it. The source of the noise was definitely inside. Rung’s vision blurred again, even as his other senses sharpened. Scent overwhelmed everything else for a long, lurid second, until Rung stepped past the threshold.

Vision and hearing returned at once. Lucidity grabbed at Rung’s processor and shook him back into brutal awareness.

A dozen mecha clashed together in the limited space, and bits of metal and drops of energon decorated the floor. Not six steps in front of Rung’s nose, Smokescreen spun sideways and kicked, taking Powerflash out at the knees. Powerflash fell, swearing, with wires tangling around one lower leg. _Fix that,_ something in Rung’s processor nagged, but he shunted the impulse aside in favor of staring as Hound smashed a fist into the side of Smokescreen’s helm and rendered him summarily unconscious. Hound whirled on Rung next, his optics narrowed, his dental plates bared, and Rung raised both hands in the universal show of harmlessness. His stack of datapads slid to the floor. The racket of battle absorbed the crash.

After a few tense seconds, Hound apparently decided that Rung was no threat. He turned and charged back into the fray. Something in that dismissal rankled, and Rung found himself baring his own dentae, balling his hands into fists, before the crowd parted and he was derailed yet again.

Beyond the chaos, a mech was standing in the reservoir itself, with the oil rising just to his knees. He stood with legs apart, hands open and relaxed at his sides. His face was eerily passive. 

It was _Skids, _Rung realized with a jolt.

He had taken two steps forward when a combination of logical thought and self-preservation stopped him again. No. Just...no. 

_Turn around. Get clear._

His vision blurred and his head swam. He recognized the effects of his medical programming—secondary, activated by request, overwhelmed often by the empathy of his primary function—struggling against his base programming’s reaction to the flood of pheromones in the room. How peculiar to sense that battle and watch its progression with a dissociation better suited to an outside observer.

Skids had been treated in the medbay after participating in Ratchet’s heat-fight, but Ambulon had acted as attending physician. Rung had no idea whether or not Skids had requested prophylaxis.

Not that the answer to that question could change the outcome. Skids was just the latest in a veritable cascade of mechs triggered into heat by the Chief Medical Officer, and this savage melee was a battle over _him._

Rung...did not belong here.

While he wasn't immune to the heat signals of other mechs, he had certainly never been fool enough to participate in a courtship fight. He didn't particularly fancy having his limbs ripped off—no matter what his misadventures since joining this quest might suggest. He shook his head, trying to clear it, and focused on closing off his vents against the maddening atmosphere of the room. If he could just resist long enough—if he could just retreat back into the hallway—then he could manually push the medical coding to the top of his processing queue and avoid the certainty of both physical and emotional injury.

At that moment, Skids flickered his optics and almost imperceptibly raised his shoulders. Even so slight a movement was enough to wrench every other mech to a halt. Rung swallowed over a lump in his intake. Maybe Skids had chosen; maybe it was over.

But Skids just shivered with a lengthy ventilation and flickered his optics again. They focused, then widened, and the blankness of his expression rippled like disturbed water. The change was subtle, but Rung had seen emotions repressed beneath a hundred thousand different masks. He could recognize fear at any distance.

All the conflicting processes of his medical coding, psychological programming and heat-signal response suddenly aligned into one irresistible purpose. _No. Fix __**that.**_

Skids's change of expression lasted only an instant before the heat coding glazed his optics again and the note of tension dissolved from his frame. He was once more passive, patient, expectant. The battle resumed with a crash of metal and someone's wail of pain.

Target acquired, mission accepted, Rung took half a minute or so to study the room and its occupants. The mecha still slugging it out were the largest and the strongest, of course, but they were also the washouts of twenty-some previous courtship fights. Some had recovered enough from earlier injuries to participate again—notably Fortress Maximus, Hound and Getaway—but others hadn’t dared to wield their limited skills until now, and Rung counted that as an advantage. He couldn’t classify the reservoir itself as either a help or a hindrance. The vast majority of the room was unworkable as a battleground, because the floor dropped off so quickly and none of the combatants would risk entering the oil and injuring Skids. The walls were largely featureless, except for the lattice of support struts and the nearby controls for the door.

Rung looked back toward the brawl. Then he looked at the controls again. Something tugged at his subconscious, something valuable, and he willfully relaxed his focus to consider not just the details, but the full perspective.

The operation of the door depended on a touchpad mounted on the wall at a comfortable height for the majority of mecha. Right now the indicator light glowed green; the door was open. A blank metal panel hid the touchpad’s electronic components, but Rung could guess their configuration easily enough. Working with model ships—and wiring them for actual RC flight—had given him a better-than-average understanding of simple circuits.

High above, clearly meant for a far larger mech, was the lever to manually engage the door mechanism in case of electrical failure.

Certainty settled over Rung like weightless warmth. He could see each necessary step with uncanny precision, as if some greater logical mind had offered him an overlay with process and cause and effect labelled in familiar glyphs. Only the execution remained, and Rung was more than capable of that.

The rest of the room—battle royale and all—faded into so much background noise as he stood in front of the touchpad and pressed the sequence. The door shut, and the indicator light blinked red. He switched his attention to the panel below the pad, but it had no obvious catch, just screws that held it flush to the rest of the wall.

How fortunate that he always carried a selection of tools.

A quick compartment search produced a screwdriver with a suitably sized head. Within seconds, he had detached the panel and laid it aside. He studied the interior before pulling out a few more tools and setting to work.

He snipped wires, disconnected some elements, glanced up to see the indicator light flash green again, despite the door remaining closed. Carefully now, but quickly. Each movement in the proper sequence, or disaster would result.

He spliced two ends together and discarded an insulation ring. For just a moment, he smiled over the end product—a masterpiece, no matter how rushed, but the real artistry would show in the result, and time was short.

Rung looked up and focused all his attention and energy on the handle far above his head. He jumped.

He almost missed. Fingers slipping, he scrambled for a better hold, and his hands clenched hard around the rubber grip only an instant before his weight pulled the handle downward and completed the circuit.

Electricity exploded through the room. Lightning branched blue and white across the ceiling, crawled down the metal cage of the wall supports, and snaked over the floor to snare every mech unlucky enough to still be standing. Rung snapped his optics shut against the flash as the current overloaded the system. For just a moment, the acrid scent of fried circuitry overpowered the heat signals in the air.

When Rung slitted his optics open again, the only mech left upright was Skids, safe in the nonconductive sanctuary of the oil. The others were scattered across the floor and faintly smoking in the sudden quiet of the room. Occasional sparks flickered in the gaps between plates of armor. Rung was still clinging to the lever handle, and only now did he realize that his arms had begun shaking from the strain. He lowered himself gingerly to the floor. Static discharge snapped against his feet and he shuddered, vaguely appalled at the destruction he had wrought.

“Holy slagging _frag,”_ someone slurred.

Someone else chuckled with a pained crackle of static. “Good one.”

“Ah.” Rung winced as he stepped over Dogfight’s outflung arm and twitching hand. Fort Max sprawled just beyond him and stared up with a sort of awed disbelief when Rung skirted around his helm. “Sorry. I just...sorry.” He couldn’t possibly have explained himself, even with all his professional poise brought to bear, but then again, no one here would need an explanation. It was barbaric madness, all of it, and for a moment of despair, Rung struggled to remember what had driven him to join it.

Then Skids stepped out of the pool, oil sluicing in ribbons off his plating, and Rung forgot anything else.

The customary sharpness of Skids’s optics had smoothed into a golden haze, but his focus settled onto Rung with unmistakeable surety. Rung cycled his vents and _reeled._ The world smelled like Skids, and Skids smelled like sweetened energon heated just below boiling point; like Maccadam’s finest grade of aged oil; like sunlight on freshly-painted metal. The scent that had lured Rung through the ship and into the reservoir not a dozen minutes ago had been nothing at all compared to this.

Rational thought evaporated. Rung sighed out a breathy note and opened his arms.

Without preamble, without hesitation, Skids came to him and went down on both knees in front of him. His hands curved around Rung’s hips, and at the moment of first contact, the code struck them both in a rolling shudder of quicksilver data. Skids imprinted on him like a lightning strike. Rung could still smell ozone threading beneath the headier scent of pheromones, and his plating crawled with the sensation of electrical aftershocks. He had felt Skids’s field before, of course, but never like this—never as if they were a single mechanism, blurring at all the edges. Skids vented pure heat and leaned in to rest his forehead against Rung’s abdomen. His arms wrapped fully around Rung’s waist, but Rung was too slim and Skids’s reach was too long, and his hands ended up gripping at Rung’s thighs with his fingers stroking languid patterns against the inner seams.

Rung ventilated deeply, and that didn’t help his disintegrating control in the slightest. “Oh, Primus below,” he said. His hands lifted of their own accord and cupped Skids’s helm to hold him closer. “Oh dear.”

Getaway was chuckling again. He couldn’t quite lift his head, but his facemask chimed against the floor when he tried. “Better get him out of here while you can still remember where to go.”

Swerve, facedown on the floor, gave him a shaky thumbs-up. "Live the dream."

“_Rung.”_ Skids’s voice, low and hot, started an ache between Rung’s thighs.

Rung shuttered his optics and tugged at Skids’s helm, urging him up. “Yes. Yes. Come along, let me—oh!” Skids surged back to his feet in a single movement, not bothering to release his grip first, and Rung was lifted right off the floor with a yelp. “Oh _dear,”_ he repeated, but his late misgivings were losing strength by the moment, and a growing exultation swelled to fill the space.

Skids groaned. “Tell me where to go. Anywhere you want.”

“My habsuite,” Rung said. He managed to steady his voice and inject it with a comfortable note of command, even if he couldn’t quite stop his hands from stroking up and down the angles of Skids’s helm.

“Right. Good.” Skids successfully negotiated the way across the floor, but when he hit the control panel, the door stayed shut. He tried again—twice—before finally understanding that there was a problem. “Won’t open,” he said, the words muddled against the cabling of Rung’s throat.

Thoroughly distracted, Rung took a moment to catch up. “...What?”

Skids palmed the control panel again, to no effect, and this time he bit at the upper curve of Rung’s clavicle plating in frustration. “Fix it.”

“I can’t fix it,” Rung said, shivering. “I used it.” He pressed a hand against the door itself, fingers curling around one of the interior hinges and tugging ineffectively at the metal. “If you could—just _lift it,_ Skids—”

“Right, right.”

After a chancy moment of juggling Rung’s weight while bending towards the floor, Skids succeeded in grabbing the manual handle at the base of the door and wrenching it upward. The mechanisms squealed; one of the tracks bent. He still managed to yank the door just high enough before it jammed, and they ducked under the bottom and escaped into the corridor. Skids adjusted his grip, settling Rung comfortably in both arms again, before starting down the hall.

~~~~~~~~~~


	2. Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Running late this week! Hopefully this plotless pr0nz is worth the wait <3

Part II

The walls of the corridor blurred past to either side. Rung had the sense that they were moving at a reckless speed, but personal safety seemed surprisingly unimportant—at least when compared to the smooth edges of Skids’s door panels beneath his fingers. Then they were in the lift, too suddenly, but Rung suffered only an instant of unease as the door slid shut because Skids was pressing him up against the back wall and kissing him. Once briefly, then deeply, until their tongues slid together with wet friction and Rung's sensory net ignited at every point of contact.

Skids was shivering under Rung's hands. Desire pulsed between them in electrical waves, blending together until Rung hadn't the slightest idea where any single emotion or impulse began or ended.

Lips touched his throat before curving into a familiar grin. “Always guessed you would taste sweet.”

What little was left of Rung's processor stalled and his spark skipped. Astonishment scattered like shrapnel through their enmeshed fields, because Skids had thought about this, had thought about _him, _without the insidious whispers of the heat code overwriting all his real impulses with lust. Maybe that shouldn't matter—not when they were here, together, unable to take their hands off each other—but it made a difference, nevertheless. Rung's lingering doubts melted away into steady, building heat.

He cupped Skids's face with both hands and kissed him again, making him groan. Lips parting, tongue stroking, he lured Skids back into his mouth and kept him there, trembling, until the lift bumped to a halt. Panting, he drew back just enough to murmur against Skids's audial. “I can't possibly tell you how wonderful you taste.”

“Later,” Skids gasped. “Tell me later.”

He shifted Rung's weight over to just one hand, and dear Primus but that demonstration of effortless strength did things to Rung's spark that echoed through both their fields. Skids's other hand slipped between them and dragged an insistent palm over the seams of Rung’s modesty panels. The click of unfastening locks was loud in comparison to Rung’s thready groan.

Fortunately or not, the door to the lift opened. An unsuspecting Rad and Crosshairs stood gawking for a handful of seconds before Rung narrowed his optics at them and wrapped openly possessive arms around Skids’s neck. The heat coding twisted through all the protective impulses of his medical programming and turned his voice into a command. “Get. Out. Of the way.” The last of his self-consciousness informed him that he was probably making himself ridiculous—no one on this ship would _ever_ consider him a threat—but the two mechs flinched backwards at once. They left a generous path out into the corridor.

Skids didn’t appear to have noticed them at all. His vocalizer was thrumming with a high, almost subsonic whine as he licked at the cabling of Rung’s throat.

Rung cupped his helm with a little shake, getting his attention. “My hab,” he said in that same commanding tone, and Skids’s ventilations skipped in response. “Let’s go.”

Somehow, Skids backed into the hall without either dropping Rung or catching his door wings on the sides of the lift. Rad and Crosshairs stared after them, so intent that they missed the lift when the door closed and it started off for a different floor. Rung might have laughed, except that Skids’s unbearably clever fingers had pushed into the widening gap behind his panels and were stroking at his spike housing.

“S-Skids,” he gasped, instead, as his optics flickered with static. “Stop that. _Wait,_ we’re still in the...in...the...”

“Not sure I can. Stop. Or wait,” Skids admitted. He didn’t seem overly concerned with Rung’s inability to remember simple nouns. They were moving fast again; they had left Rad and Crosshairs and the lift far behind. Fortunately, Skids must have known or guessed the location of Rung’s hab, because Rung could no longer divide his attention between keeping his panel shut and navigating the ship. A moment later, they crashed gracelessly into Rung’s door. The impact was hard enough to rattle all their plating and jar just a sliver of good sense back into Rung’s processor. “Please,” Skids groaned, as he abandoned any delicacy and pawed at Rung’s thighs with shaking hands. “Please, please...”

Rung clawed at the wall until he found the key pad. “Shh. It’s all right. Shh.” He entered the code—backwards, but right the first time—then yelped when the door hissed open and sent them staggering, nearly overbalancing, before finally colliding with the berth at the far side of the room.

Skids loomed over him in a mass of trembling plating and blazing optics, and their joined fields churned with desperation edging on pain.

“Please,” he begged.

This was no time for finesse. Rung struggled upright and pressed one hand to Skids’s chest, urging him fully onto the berth, trying to ignore the obvious inadequacies of his own skinny frame. Despite Skids’s far greater strength, he was malleable in Rung’s hands. He lay back against the berth in a mouthwatering stretch of powerful hydraulics and gleaming armor, and his thighs spread to bare a valve as finely crafted as the rest of his frame. The calipers inside shifted, spiraling down in a way that made Rung’s spike throb and his panels snap open.

“Shh, I have you,” he whispered. His fingers slipped between Skids’s thighs and gently circled the housing of his retracted spike before gliding over his anterior node.

Skids made a broken sound, low and sweet, and Rung finally allowed his spike to extend with a groan. Skids’s hands grasped at his hips, almost hard enough to dent the metal. Biting into his lower lip, Rung pressed in between Skids’s legs and filled his valve in one slow, easy thrust.

Optics surging white, Skids arched up against him and overloaded at once. The heat coding was already riding him hard, and the ecstasy rippling through his field gnawed through Rung’s best attempts at self-control. Then again... Control was overrated. Rung didn’t make either of them wait, just rocked his hips in deep, measured thrusts, grinding against Skids’s anterior node and driving him straight through the first overload and into the next. Skids rewarded him with a wordless shout. Electrical feedback crawled over his armor in ribbons of brilliant blue.

He was so lovely that Rung couldn’t have stopped, couldn’t have slowed down even had he wanted to, and he had never wanted anything less. One of his hands curved against the side of Skids’s helm. One thumb stroked against his lower lip. Rung braced his weight against the other forearm, and he paid careful attention as he angled each thrust higher, deeper, until Skids clutched at him and their meshed fields went molten again. Skids’s calipers cinched down tight, incredible pressure, and this time, Rung had no hope of resistance. He keened as overload surged through his frame and spilled from his spike.

In the aftermath, Rung panted against Skids’s chest. His fans groaned with the effort of dumping so much heat. Skids was like a furnace—still blazing, even after three overloads in a row.

Still trembling, too, and Rung struggled up to his forearms to get a look at Skids’s face. Those golden optics were dim but warm. The smile was warm, too, and it was familiar from late nights and strong engex and all the quiet fantasies that Rung had done so well to ignore.

“Are you all right?” Even the heat coding couldn’t silence Rung’s concern.

“I am the best I have _ever_ been,” Skids said, voice slurring just a bit, but then his hand cupped at the back of Rung’s helm and pulled him down into a kiss, and Rung forgot just what had worried him in the first place. Powerful, thorned tendrils of need stretched through Skids’s field and wrapped them both in growing urgency. Skids nipped at Rung’s lower lip, and his thighs wrapped around Rung’s hips as his valve clenched and relaxed in a liquid caress.

Rung hummed his appreciation into another kiss and his spike throbbed in sympathy. The coding kept him hard, kept him as ready as he was willing. Scarcely a dozen deliberate thrusts brought them both back to overload. He spilled into Skids with a gasp. From Skids’s field, he felt a sharp-edged pulse of lust, a wave of triumph, a note of _longing,_ and he barely slowed before resuming that same driving rhythm.

The pace was brutal: it demanded a response, and Skids answered with a little groan at the deepest point of every thrust.

“Deeper,” he said. His hips jerked in counterpoint to Rung’s, but that only ground their equipment housings together in a way that—while compelling—clearly failed to satisfy the demands of his frame. “Rung—please—”

A splinter of unease worked its way into the center of Rung’s spark.

What if he truly couldn’t give Skids what he needed? Rung was small and slight, and his equipment was proportional. The coding had accepted him, suggesting that they were at least physically compatible, but perhaps it had glitched or malfunctioned...or mistaken him for someone else. After all, he had hardly dispatched his competition in the traditional way. He had forced the outcome. If his actions had somehow tricked Skids’s coding into imprinting on him despite a fundamental deficiency of his frame or his programming... He couldn’t bear the thought that Skids might suffer the consequences.

Panic threatened. “I can’t,” Rung whispered.

It wasn’t enough.

No matter how he tried, _he_ wasn’t enough.

Jagged projections of self-doubt spread like a tessellation through both their fields. Skids whimpered, his hips still rocking, but Rung caught his desperation in return, and the distortion only grew.

_No._

“Shh,” Rung murmured, as much for himself as for Skids. They were only reflecting each other, after all, and the tiny space left between them made the echoes particularly loud. This was all so much mirrored noise. Underneath the fear, a core of affection burned steady and bright. Rung slowed his thrusting to a stop, and when Skids clutched at him in protest, he stroked soothing hands over Skids’s chest and down his thighs. “Shh. It’s all right. I’ve thought of something.” He cupped Skids’s chin in one hand and waited until the other mech had calmed enough to pay attention. “Will you trust me?”

He drew on several million years’ worth of professional experience to project calm and confidence. The effort extended even to the steady glow of his biolights.

Skids’s ventilations evened out in response, and his hands stopped grasping to rest heavy against Rung’s hips. He nodded.

“Good,” Rung said with a smile. He was used to being less than enough, after all. He knew how to improvise.

With a little groan, he slipped out of Skids’s valve, and the aching of his spike was in perfect agreement with Skids’s moan of loss. The latter, at least, he could soothe by sliding a hand between them and pressing two fingers back inside, as deep as he could reach. The sensors beneath his fingertips sparked with charge. He circled his thumb against the anterior node and admired the glow that flickered, then brightened when he rubbed insistently at the base.

Skids panted through his vents and his hips twitched, trying to rock against the friction. Rung slipped his third and fourth fingers inside, so easily, because Skids was dripping with lubricant and trembling with need.

“Is it too much?” Rung asked. He kept the pressure steady against Skids’s anterior node.

Skids shook his head. His vocoder clicked over static; his optics were shuttered. “No. Please. _Please.”_ The eloquent clench and release of his valve made his argument better than words ever could, and Rung struggled to keep his hand steady as he adjusted his hold and folded his thumb into his palm to ease the stretch.

“Am I hurting you?” Their linked fields gave no hint of pain, but Rung wasn’t about to take risks with something—with _someone—_so precious. “Is this all right?”

Skids gasped and shook his head again. “Not hurting me,” he groaned. “Don’t you dare stop.” His hips shifted, urgent, and his valve relaxed enough to pull Rung’s hand fully inside.

Rung shuttered his optics with a moan. His hands had none of a medic’s sensitivity, but Skids felt incredible around his fingers, nevertheless—wet heat and rippling calipers with the pinprick burn of activated nodes against his fingertips. He curled his fingers to rub against that ridge of sensors, and Skids answered him with a sobbing gasp. His valve squeezed tight, but not tight enough to keep Rung from sliding his hand even deeper. He pressed against the next set of nodes with his fingertips, gentle stimulation, while his thumb rubbed slow half-circles, back and forth, against the first sensor ring.

Skids arched into overload and their fields crashed over Rung like a breaking wave of bliss. Rung’s plating flared and his spark skipped, but he held onto his self-control with an ironclad exertion of will. His fingers barely shifted, careful against those internal sensors. Resting his cheek against Skids’s inner thigh, Rung inhaled the scent of him, hot and hungry, and pressed his lips to the metalmesh at the seam.

The powerful clench of Skids’s valve eased. Rung stroked his free hand downward from Skids’s chest and over his abdomen with steady, soothing pressure, repeating the movement until the aftershocks ebbed.

“My dear,” Rung murmured. Something deep inside his chest ached when Skids relaxed and his field shimmered with trust. “You are so beautiful.”

He pressed his lips against Skids’s plating again, humming in appreciation. The vibration trembled through resensitizing components, fluttering against the external nodes of Skids’s array, and the anticipatory tension returned to his frame.

Rung’s fingertips reached the next ring of nodes and stroked at them until they sparked, until Skids convulsed with a cry, until lubricant spilled out of him and down Rung’s arm in a slow, glittering spiral. It wasn’t quite an overload, so he pressed deeper again, until he was touching nodes far past anything his spike could reach. Another careful twist of his wrist, and his fingers rubbed against the terminal nodes at the apex of Skids’s valve.

Skids stilled at the touch, his optics flaring, and then he groaned with a heavy, heady vibration that Rung felt from his fingertips down to the joint of his elbow. He braced himself against his opposite shoulder and began moving his arm in gentle thrusts. Each stroke nudged against Skids’s ceiling nodes and rubbed steady friction against every internal sensor, building pleasure like an inferno, and Rung couldn’t help himself—he squirmed against the berth until he could get his legs around Skids’s thigh and grind his spike against the smooth metal.

Their fields surged, hot and sweet, irresistible. Skids overloaded once, then again, then _again,_ as if he might never stop.

“_Beautiful,”_ Rung repeated, and he pushed the truth of it into his voice, through both their fields, until Skids shuddered with a blend of astonishment and acceptance.

His hands clutched at Rung’s shoulders and tugged ineffectually at his plating. “Rung. In me. Now.”

At that moment, Rung would have given him whatever he asked, up to and including his own spark. He took care, nevertheless, easing his hand free after a lingering caress to the deepest of Skids’s nodes. He licked the gleam of lubricant from his fingertips as Skids pulled him close and wrapped him in those gorgeous thighs. Then their hips aligned and Rung pushed into him without hesitation, sliding in hard and hot, all the way to the hilt. His self-control boiled off like so much vapor. The coding hooked talons into his processor, straight through his motor relays, and he overloaded like a rutting mechanimal while Skids shivered beneath him and shouted his appreciation.

Rung kept thrusting, kept surrendering to the clench of Skids’s valve until he couldn’t imagine how he still had transfluid left to give.

When the coding finally relaxed its grip, Rung panted, strutless, against Skids’s chest and blinked the haze from his optics. He had to reset several subroutines before he could speak. “Skids,” he said, then tried again, a little louder, when there was no answer. “Skids?”

A struggle up onto his elbows reassured him that Skids had only fallen offline. Profound satisfaction thrummed through their fields. Rung collapsed against him in weary relief, then flickered his optics as the movement jostled their equipment together with a brief but tingling pulse. His spike twitched in unmistakable interest.

Oh, Primus. He was too old for this sort of thing.

After another minute or two, he gathered up enough willpower to slide himself free and roll gracelessly to one side, where he curled into the space just under Skids’s arm. Even that slight exertion left him dizzy.

This was going to kill him, and he was going to die in _rapture._

_~~~~~~~~~~_


	3. Part 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings in this part for a flashback suffered by the non-POV character.

Part 3

The coding wouldn’t allow either of them to rest for long. Rung took the opportunity to tidy them both up a bit with the prepackaged cleanser wipes that he kept on hand. He knew that he should refuel while he had the chance—and that he should try his best to get some fuel into Skids, too—but every time he persuaded himself to leave the berth, Skids’s scent clouded his processor and his body betrayed him. After three attempts, he surrendered to the coding’s demands and simply wrapped himself around as much of Skids as he could reach.

Soon enough, Skids shivered beneath him, and their linked fields stirred with restless hunger. Rung lifted his head to brush his lips against the corner of Skids’s mouth.

Skids twisted toward him with a low, throaty sound that went straight to the base of Rung’s spike. He bit at Rung’s lower lip and clutched at him with both hands. “Shh, I’m here,” Rung murmured before kissing him. His fingers stroked down Skids’s chest and over his abdomen with firm, calming pressure, until he could hook a hand under the back of Skids’s thigh and lift it up and over his own hip. Skids wriggled closer. It was easy, so easy like this, to slide up and inside—to meet Skids’s gasp with another kiss.

They tangled around each other. Rung rocked into him and reached to pet at the hinge of one door wing; Skids jerked as the metal quivered under Rung’s fingertips. The imprinting let him guess what Skids preferred with better accuracy than six million years of psychological study ever could, and Rung exploited the coding for all it was worth as he dipped his fingers into seams and bit at the cording of Skids’s neck. Skids arched up against him and moaned.

“Let me give you everything you want.” Rung never wanted him to have to beg for what he needed.

Not like he’d been made to plead, facedown against the cold metal of his own desk.

The memory was an old one, and its claws were blunted. It was powerless against the immediacy of Skids clenching around him and turning liquid in overload. Venting in sharp and sudden ecstasy, Rung overloaded in response, his head spinning and his tanks aching as they emptied. He snaked a hand between them and rubbed slippery circles against the bright, hot nub of Skids’s anterior node, working him gently up again into another climax. Skids keened. His calipers flexed in chaotic spasms as lubricant pulsed over Rung’s upper thighs.

With those calipers working against him, Rung was helpless and already hard again. He had thought of another way of getting deeper, maybe deep enough to make Skids’s field _sing,_ but that would unfortunately require a change of position.

“Here,” he said, as he eased his thumb off Skids’s node and pulled back enough to kneel against the berth. Skids reached for him and wrapped a hand around his wrist. “I want you to turn over.” Rung leaned over him, unable to quite stop himself from licking his lips at the sight of him, so open, so willing, so warm. Rung smoothed a hand up the inside of Skids’s thigh to cup his valve. “Get on your hands and knees, if you please.”

Skids huffed a laugh, but his optics blazed white and his plating flared. He obeyed. His hips rolled and his back curved, keeping his valve in contact with Rung’s palm for as long as possible before he settled onto his knees and forearms against the berth.

“Touch me.” His optics gleamed, citrine-gold, as he looked back at Rung over the machinery of one powerful shoulder.

Oh, irresistible. Rung slid his hands up the backs of Skids’s thighs to grasp at his hips and pulled himself close enough not just to touch, but to taste. Not exactly his ultimate goal, but he couldn’t bear to waste the opportunity. His tongue flicked at Skids’s anterior node before sliding into his valve. The calipers spiraled down, trying to clench and hold, until Rung licked them loose again to bare the first internal ring of nodes. He licked those, too, and shuttered his optics to better appreciate the tingle of gathering charge.

“Primus,” Skids groaned, an imprecation that Rung had _never_ heard him use, even during battle.

Rung chuckled and rewarded him with a long, slow glide along the next row of sensors. Then he withdrew while Skids was still shivering, snugged their hips together, and settled himself between those trembling door wings. “Is this all right?” He trailed his fingertips along the edge of one panel, following it downward to the hinge.

“Yes.” Skids opened his thighs a bit more and curled his hands into the padding of the berth. His hips shifted, just enough to drag the slick heat of his valve along the length of Rung’s spike.

“My dear,” Rung whispered. He wrapped one arm around Skids’s waist.

To get the proper angle, he had to brace himself against Skids’s back, but he had very few worries about Skids comfortably supporting his weight. He guided himself with his free hand, and Skids rocked his hips back. They slid together with a shared gasp. Rung pulled away in a slow, maddening withdrawal before thrusting deep again. He lingered there, grinding against internal nodes until Skids cried out and clawed at the berth. Then he gradually withdrew and pushed deep again. Skids curled his hands into fists, pressed his forehead against the padding of the berth, and _purred_ with such profound pleasure that their joined fields rang like a bell.

A little flutter of joy ignited at the center of Rung’s spark. He tried his best to tamp that flame—because he knew better, he truly did—but he couldn’t keep a thrill of heady affection from spilling like molten metal between them.

Skids’s ventilations hitched, and he pressed back hard into Rung’s next thrust.

Rung moaned, shuttered his optics, and flattened his hand against Skids’s abdominal plates as he quickened the pace. He was helpless; he was hopeless. With Skids, his resistance had never been anything but theoretical, and the reality scattered his good sense and left only the base impulses at his core. He kept thrusting, hard and deep and steady, and Skids rocked back against him in perfect counterpoint until they overloaded together once, twice. Rung’s head spun. His fans strained to dispel the heat between them, but he couldn’t slow down. He clung to Skids’s plating and overloaded again, instead, with a shattershot burst of electricity that crackled against the berth. Gasping, Rung pressed his forehead to Skids’s back.

Only then did he suspect something was wrong. Skids had gone quiet in more ways than one, and even his body had turned eerily still—barely trembling with tension rather than passion.

“Am I hurting you?” Rung withdrew immediately, collapsing backwards as his legs quivered out from under him. Just the thought was more than enough to overwhelm the persuasiveness of the coding. Skids said nothing, but something shadowy—confusion, discomfort—churned through the projections of his field.

Rung peered at him in concern, but the bulk of Skids’s shoulder plating and alt mode kibble blocked any view of his face. Rung scrambled to his side, instead, and cupped a hand against the angle of Skids’s jaw. Optics dim, Skids stared straight ahead, but Rung doubted he was actually seeing anything. He was focused somewhere _else_, somewhere imagined or—more likely—subconsciously remembered. Threads of static flickered over his optics. His lips pulled slowly back to bare gritted teeth.

That hint of fear resurfaced from beneath the waves of programmed lust.

Stricken, Rung squeezed himself into the space in front of Skids and cupped his face in both hands. He exerted his self-control, forcing back his own guilt and panic to concentrate, and after a moment’s struggle, a centered sense of calm unfurled into his field. Through the imprinting, it spread to Skids. Within seconds, Skids’s ventilations steadied and his optics stopped flickering.

“Skids.” Rung lowered a hand to Skids’s shoulder and pushed, gently, until Skids sat up and settled back onto his knees. He caught one of Skids’s hands in his own. “Look at me.”

The distance retreated from Skids’s expression and his optics focused, first on their clasped hands, then on Rung’s face. His free hand lifted, hovered for a moment of uncertainty, and then pressed against the domed plex at the center of Rung’s chest. Rung vented sharply. His spark stuttered in a way that echoed through both their fields.

The corner of Skids’s mouth curved. Warmth brightened his optics and washed through his field, into Rung’s, and back again.

“Rung?”

Rung smiled and squeezed his hand. “That’s me.”

Despite his best efforts, some of his dizzy relief must have spilled into their fields, because Skids moved his hand from Rung’s chest to the back of his neck and pulled him close enough to kiss. He let Skids take the lead, and for a little while, one kiss blended into the next, slow and easy, almost unbearably sweet. Skids finally eased back enough to rest his forehead in the space between Rung’s neck and shoulder, where he ventilated in a long, shuddering sigh.

Rung slid his arms around Skids and stroked the nape of his neck. “Are you all right?” he murmured.

“I think so.” Skids’s shoulders lifted in a shrug. “I’m not entirely sure what happened. I just...” His half of their shared fields twisted through patterns of trepidation and confusion before settling on embarrassment. “Don’t remember. I’m sorry.”

“Shh, no,” Rung said, tightening his embrace until they were pressed flush together and he was supporting the full weight of Skids’s upper body. “Please don’t apologize. I should have paid closer attention. That was no one’s fault but mine.” Rung doubted that he would ever forget the indications of repressed trauma in Skids’s behavior, but nevertheless, he allowed his medical coding to note those signs, catalog them, and mark them for further investigation. He had guessed that Skids had been hurt in ways he couldn’t bear to remember, but this was chilling proof. “Oh, dearest. I never wanted to make you feel that way.”

“I liked it,” Skids said against Rung’s throat. “I did.”

“At first,” Rung agreed. His throat ached with regret. “But I’m not certain you could say no to me, right now. Even if you wanted to.”

Skids sighed in defeat. His arms were wrapped around Rung’s waist, one of his hands smoothing up and down Rung’s thigh, a thumb tracing the seams of the plating. Rung couldn’t entirely suppress his shiver at the touch, but he focused on Skids’s voice. “Guess you’re right about that. I can’t exactly, ah, stop at the moment.” Humiliation knotted their fields again, along with the rising edge of hunger, and Rung supposed that while he couldn’t correct the past, he could improve the present.

“We don’t have to stop. Here, sit back a bit.”

Skids raised his head in wordless question, but he obeyed anyway and settled back onto his knees. Despite his uncertainty, his movements and his expression were vulnerable, willing. Trust resurfaced in their fields. He was unspeakably beautiful, lit by their biolights and the dim glow of the room, and Rung couldn’t help himself. He used his hands around the back of Skids’s neck to lift up and kiss him. Skids opened for him, meeting Rung’s tongue with his own, returning one kiss with another until the world started to blur again into a bright, hot haze.

“Wait,” Rung turned his head to gasp. He shuttered his optics and quivered when Skids licked down the length of his throat. Focus, _focus._ With a bit of squirming, he braced his shoulders against the wall at the head of the berth and slid his legs between Skids’s parted thighs. “Come here,” he said, tugging at Skids’s upper arms. “You set the pace. However you want.”

Understanding brightened Skids’s optics. He eased into Rung’s lap but braced most of his weight on his own calves—a show of consideration that Rung thoroughly appreciated, given his smaller size.

Rung appreciated the display of casual strength, too, and the smooth rotation of the joints and mechanisms that connected hips to thighs to knees. Again, he couldn’t help but touch. He skated both hands down the lengths of Skids’s outer thighs, then up again, this time along the inner seams, but when Skids’s ventilations hitched, he paused. “Too much?” he asked, static licking along each word.

Skids shook his head, and a little smile quirked the side of his mouth. Then his hand wrapped around Rung’s spike and blanked all his higher processor functions with a slow stroke from base to tip.

“Oh _Primus.”_

Chuckling, Skids settled over him, _onto_ him, and oh, the slippery grip of those calipers ought to be a crime. Skids groaned and arched his back, riding that thrust and pushing down into another. Rung gripped at Skids’s thighs with both hands—not because he had any delusions of supporting his weight or directing his movements, but because holding onto something might keep Rung from entirely losing his mind. Fortunately, Skids seemed to be grounded by the touch. His movements steadied and slowed, turned deliberate.

He sank down onto his calves and rolled his hips. The position kept Rung’s spike as deep as possible; the movements intensified the friction against the nodes near the apex of Skids’s valve. Pleasure filled their fields like an expanding vortex.

“Good,” Rung soothed, because those jagged whispers of uncertainty still lurked behind the roar of the coding. “Skids, you are so _good.”_

Skids quivered, shuttered his optics, and overloaded with a sob. Rung shouted at the rippling squeeze-and-release of the calipers and the rush of lubricant like liquid gold, but he didn’t overload. He slid his hands up to either side of Skids’s waist, instead, and reveled in the fluttering of delicate machinery beneath his palms. Still shivering, Skids reactivated his optics into narrow slits. His hand covered one of Rung’s, his fingers closing over the palm, his thumb pressing against the sensitive fuel line at the inner wrist as he lifted Rung’s hand to his lips. He licked at Rung’s fingertips before grazing his teeth against the microphone in Rung’s thumb.

Rung jumped, gasping. The surface crackled with feedback as his programming tried to interpret tactile sensation as audio input. Unsuccessful, his software settled on outputting a steady, vibrating hum that seemed to activate every sensory node in his frame. His hips rocked hard, entirely of their own volition.

Skids groaned, long and low, and pressed down against that thrust with an irresistible _squeeze._ He let go of Rung to brace both hands against the wall behind the berth.

Any uncertainty was gone, replaced by a focused, fiery hunger. Rung’s hands cupped at the junctures of Skids’s inner thighs, fingertips sliding into the gaps to stroke the cabling, thumbs meeting over the anterior node, giving Skids something to grind against with every thrust. “Show me,” Rung demanded, hardly sure just what he was asking, but Skids’s optics blazed in response.

Oh, he was lovely. His entire frame shifted with powerful grace—a strength made all the more beautiful by conscious control. Rung loved to see it, wanted to watch him _work_ for it, offered up the overwhelming surge of his own desire in direct response.

He couldn’t hide his adoration. He couldn’t remember why he had ever tried.

Static roughened Skids’s voice. “Harder, please—”

Rung cried out, as if he were the one who needed the friction, but maybe he did—maybe they both did, because they were overlapping at every edge and blending together in all the ways that mattered most. Ecstasy spiraled under his plating and built until he felt it glowing through all his seams, throbbing with the rhythm of his spark.

They overloaded together, a white-hot starburst of joy. Skids screamed, or maybe that was just the shriek of metal as his hands dented the wall.

Dizzy with shared bliss, Rung stroked Skids’s plating until his trembling began to ease and his ventilations finally started to calm. Rung felt as if gravity hadn’t quite regained its grip on his frame. He was weightless, euphoric, and still—unbelievably—wanting more. Above him, Skids was lax in lingering satisfaction, lips parted and optics offline, but he leaned subtly into the press of Rung’s hand against his abdomen.

Rung spoke with subtle command. “Lift up.”

“Hm?” Skids obeyed without bothering to activate his optics. The trust in his field was absolute in a way that Rung hadn’t experienced in a terribly long time, and it humbled him in ways he had forgotten. He cupped a hand against Skids’s valve, just the tips of his fingers sliding inside to tease the sensors. Skids jerked against the touch. Then he sighed, settling back into the sensation, and his optics barely flickered when Rung shifted into a better position beneath him.

“Tell me if this is too much,” Rung said, voice muffled by Skids’s inner thighs, and then he abandoned conversation in favor of finding Skids’s anterior node with his tongue.

Skids jerked again, but he didn’t pull away. His vents activated with a roar. “Rung!”

Rung hummed for him, gently, and steadied Skids’s hips with his hands when they started to shake. His tongue slicked over Skids’s valve, spreading lubricant. He licked his lips with a moan. Gasping, Skids rocked his hips against Rung’s hands, his voice rising into a pleading whine. Rung took pity on him. He licked at the base of Skids’s anterior node before catching it between his lips and suckling, hard and sweet.

Skids groaned his name, again and again, and Rung couldn’t help himself, ethical considerations be damned. He sent the record command to his thumb microphone. When this had ended—as it would, as it must—and he was alone again, lost in the darkness of others’ disinterest... He wanted this moment. He wanted at least the sound of Skids, knowing who had done this for him and begging for more.

He never wanted to forget it.

~~~~~~~~~~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anyone exclaiming "Primus!" while interfacing with Rung will never not be funny to me. Bonus points when it's Rung himself.


	4. Part 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unfortunately, the fun is over. Time for an aftermath of avoidance and angst!

Part 4  
  
Skids dropped back into awareness like a leaden weight, sinking, struggling, vents clogging and sparkbeat stuttering. The Empyrean Suite pounded through his head. The volume was unendurable; it was going to shake him apart. He was going to let it, because he couldn't fight it, because there was nothing else left except darkness, and he had to hold onto _something—_

Someone was touching him.

He clung to that contact and let it steady him until he felt solid again. Error messages stopped flashing in his HUD. Systems rebooted one by one. At last, his neural net reset, and the gentle pressure became a hand, small but capable, resting against his forehead. That hand was familiar, and so was the voice that spoke smoothly into the darkness.

“Shh. You're all right.” Fingertips brushed along the upper crest of his helm before stilling again. “I have you."

_I have you._

A jumble of memory files began to unpack. They were partially corrupted—what a surprise—and entirely out of sequence, so that one moment he sat in the medbay with Atomizer's arrow protruding from his thigh, and the next moment he was following Ratchet out of Swerve's bar, his head swimming with heat signals and his hands clenching into fists.

He was in the ship's elevator, kissing someone who tasted better than any engex he'd ever tried.

He stood in the oil reservoir, and the world flashed over white with electric current.

He stumbled down the hallway with his plating hot, itching underneath, and he couldn't bear that feeling of vulnerability and he couldn't remember _why—_

_I have you._

Someone was touching him and it was Rung, his hands so slim and sure on Skids's plating and between his thighs, perfect pressure against every node, inside and outside, until overload rocked him again, again, again.

He was in the medbay once more, or maybe still, and Ambulon injected something cold that stung his fuel lines, but all he felt was relief.

He trembled against the berth, with Rung's arms around him and Rung's spike inside him, thrusting slow and sweet, filling him until he thought he would lose his mind and knew he would never even miss it.

He needed to find somewhere safe but somewhere large enough but somewhere alone where everyone could find him...

Rung's mouth was against his valve and the hot slide of his tongue was a blessing, was a curse, and Skids shouted both at once. Their tangled fields went incandescent with overload, before he dragged Rung upward, and inward, and finally back inside where Skids needed him most.

Oh, _frag._

He had gone into heat, of course he had, because he must have been at prophylaxis exhaustion and unable to remember it. He had gone into heat, just like so many others, and he had gone to the oil reservoir to give everyone room to fight over him, except... Except that he had imprinted on Rung. _Rung_ had won him. Rung had won his courtship fight, and Skids couldn’t quite remember how, except for a lingering sense of admiration for absolutely _ruthless_ cleverness.

_I have you._

Rung had him, all right, with that mouth and those hands and that gentle voice of command that promised and delivered every kind of sweet surrender.

With an uncontrollable shiver, Skids activated his optics. The brightness gradually sharpened into the white ceiling of the medbay. A monitor beeped distantly, but steadily, and Skids recognized the rhythm of his own sparkbeat. The blue-opticked blur at his left finally turned into Rung, complete with a little frown and a furrow of worry between his eyebrows.

“Hey,” Skids said and winced at the roughness of his own voice.

Rung's hand stroked his cheek before pulling away, and Skids humiliated himself by making a low, needy noise at the loss. There was a pause. Then the hand returned. Rung hummed, a sound as familiar and welcome as his touch, before speaking again. “How do you feel?”

Skids considered the question. He felt like Rung had reached into his chest, cupped both hands around his spark, and brought him undone while simultaneously keeping him from breaking apart.

Saying that out loud was definitely not an option, so he settled for something less incendiary. "Kind of like I was dragged behind the ship through a couple of quantum jumps." He tried a smile and flickered his optics a couple of times. His frame ached in all sorts of new and interesting ways, and he was exhausted down to his struts, but he felt surprisingly well, all things considered. Someone had taken good care of him during the worst of his stupor.

“I’m so sorry,” Rung said.

The way his voice broke over the last word and his fingers suddenly trembled made Skids frown and look up at him again. “...What?”

Rung’s optics were dim, almost fully shuttered, and his face had turned away from Skids and toward the floor. “I never should have been there.” His mouth pinched into a frown that hurt to see. “It shouldn’t have been me.” This time, he did withdraw his hand, and all Skids’s determination wouldn’t allow him to override his exhaustion and reach out to pull him back.

“What?” Skids repeated, wishing that his processor could catch up to whatever conversation Rung seemed to be having without him. “No. That’s not...it.” That wasn’t what had happened; that wasn’t how he felt about the parts that he did remember. “Just—”

A double-chirp interrupted him.

It was Rung’s com-link, and he answered it aloud. “Yes?” The sadness in his expression flashed to alarm. “When? Now?” There was a distant shout, followed by a closer crash. The shouting grew louder. “Yes, yes, I’m on my way!” Rung stood so quickly that he upset the table next to Skids’s medical berth. He didn’t stop to right it, but he did pause to lean over and brush a kiss against Skids’s forehead. “Please rest,” he said. Then he was gone.

“Wait, I can help,” Skids said, moments too late, to an empty room.

He tried to get up, wasting a few more moments on the effort, because whatever the current calamity was, it seemed to be happening right outside the door. The shouting reached a crescendo, and First Aid’s voice rose above all the rest in panic. “No no no, don’t _shoot him, _what are you thinking—”

“All of you need to calm down immediately.”

That was Ultra Magnus, sounding not at all calm. In fact, he sounded...winded, as if he were under a lot of physical strain, and the flurry of metallic scraping and struggling that followed gave Skids the impression that the ship’s Second was fighting against something—or maybe someone. Another bout of crashing and shouting culminated in a yelp of pain and a clattering of tools, and finally, something outside Skids’s room hit the wall so hard that the metal plating actually buckled inward. Skids stopped trying to get up and into the fight and started trying to get up and barricade himself behind the berth. He was equally unsuccessful.

Fortunately, both the crashing and the shouting had stopped. Now he could hear Ultra Magnus—not individual words, just the deep rumble of his voice—speaking into the sudden silence. His tone was artificially reassuring in a way that Skids found exactly the opposite.

The fighting didn’t resume, however, and anyone who spoke kept to low tones. Skids found himself drifting in and out of semi-consciousness despite his best efforts. A final, clattering thud roused him just enough to hear First Aid swearing, profusely but harmlessly, in the aftermath.

Then he was pulled down into the dark again.

When he woke the next time, the room was quiet except for the beeping of the monitor. A check with his chronometer did him no good—still offline—but he thought the ship might be in the middle of a night cycle due to the lighting level and the lack of activity in the medbay proper. The slight dip in the berth padding at his side was Rung. His friend had fallen into recharge mostly in a chair, but his head was pillowed on one folded arm against the berth, with the other arm outstretched over the padding.

Skids managed to coordinate his frame and his limited strength well enough to roll his arm over to one side, stretch out his hand, and curl his fingers over Rung’s.

Rung shifted and the antenna at his temple twitched. Then he hummed, softly, and contentment flickered out through his field before it settled back into the suppressed rhythms of recharge.

“Hey, Eyebrows,” Skids murmured, but he kept his voice too low to hear. He guessed that if Rung came out of recharge now, he might take the chance to escape again—this time without the convenient excuse of an emergency. Rung never hesitated to address difficult or awkward subjects in the course of his professional work, but around his own fears or feelings, he was skittish.

Could they stay friends, after this? Heat cycles played merry havoc with all sorts of relationships.

The possibility of losing Rung’s companionship hit him unexpectedly hard, like a blade slipped and twisted into a vulnerable armor gap. Rung inspired him in ways he had never imagined. Without Rung, he doubted he would have worked up the courage to open himself to the other mecha on this ship. He would have been friendly enough, sure, but he would have held them all at arm’s length. He would have stayed safe and stayed alone, behind whichever reinvented identity he had chosen.

Saving Rung from the sparkeater hadn’t changed any of that—not at first, anyway. He’d discovered how much he liked being useful, so he’d pitched in whenever the crew needed an extra hand, and he’d made some superficial friendships.

Only when he’d stood over Rung’s medical berth, staring down at a frame made whole again but for the lack of a _head,_ had he realized the depth of his attachment.

Too little, too late.

Under those circumstances, Rung’s survival had been astonishing, his recovery miraculous, and Skids hadn’t quite dared to push his luck. No sense testing the patience of the universe by asking for more than he’d already been given. He and Rung had settled into comfortable friendship, and if Rung had ever wanted more than that, he had never hinted as much. Until now.

Skids shuttered his optics with a shiver. Fragmented as his memory might be, he doubted he was misremembering the way Rung had touched him—all consideration and care, fully attuned to Skids’s pleasure. No one _had_ to offer so much, even with imprinting. Lust was one thing—really a necessity, during a heat where physical attraction might be otherwise nonexistent. But Rung had given him more than just coding-fueled desire. The raw affection and longing in Rung’s field hadn’t been necessary for a successful coupling, and it couldn’t possibly have been false.

As for what it meant... Well, Skids could only consult his own lists of hopes and fears. He lacked a balanced perspective.

He didn’t particularly want to recharge again so soon, but his limbs felt heavy and his vision blurred. Stupor lagged his processor and offlined his peripheral subroutines one by one. He squeezed lightly at Rung’s fingers and sighed, reassured, when Rung’s field brushed against his own in response. He’d grown fond of that sensation. It was a comfort, now, when everything seemed so precarious.

He clung to that contact long after everything else went dark.

When Skids woke the third time, he felt measurably better, even though Rung was—predictably—absent. His chronometer indicated that seven days had passed since he’d originally gone into heat. Beside the berth, First Aid was unhooking monitors and coiling up cords. He jerked upright, smacking the top of his helm against a stabilizing joint, when Skids cleared his ventilation systems with a cough.

“You’re awake! Ah, obviously, sorry. I didn’t expect you for another couple cycles.” First Aid activated the scanning function of his visor and swept it from Skids’s helm to his feet. “Good sign.”

Skids grinned. “I guess that means I’m going to survive?”

“Oh, probably.” First Aid tapped at the access panel on Skids’s inner arm and plugged in one of his own cables when Skids opened it. “Whether you want to or not.”

“Just the sort of certainty I like to hear from my physician.”

After twenty-some mecha going unexpectedly into and coming unpleasantly out of heat, First Aid had likely heard more than his share of misery, but his visor still glittered with amusement. A minute later, he disconnected from Skids’s systems and closed the access panel with a snap. “You’re in good shape,” he said. “No damage. A few systems will stay offline for another week or so, and don’t even think about trying to circumvent the recuperative period—you know the drill.” The glow of his visor dimmed a bit as he met Skids’s optics. “You didn’t spark,” he added, more gently.

For a moment, Skids stared at him in confusion. Then he understood.

He couldn’t have described exactly what he felt. During the heat itself, during his few conscious periods during stupor...he hadn’t once considered the possibility that he might have kindled. Even now, when what he wanted or didn’t want no longer made any difference, he could hardly wrap his processor around the idea. Would Rung have wanted that? What sort of mech would they have sparked?

No, he could let it go. As if things between the two of them weren’t complicated enough.

First Aid apparently took his dumbfounded silence as disappointment, because he reached out and squeezed Skids’s shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s okay,” Skids said, shaking his head. “I just...hadn’t thought about it. Did anyone else...?” He interrupted himself a moment too late. “Er. You can’t tell me that, can you.” That would be the definition of privileged medical information, after all, and despite his history as a spy, Skids wasn’t that nosy about the private lives of his shipmates. Still, he was reminded of a different mystery. “Hey. What was that fight earlier? Right outside my room.”

First Aid pulled back and began disconnecting Skids from the monitoring systems with an aggrieved sigh. “It wasn’t exactly a fight. Not everyone comes out of medical stasis peacefully, that’s all.”

Skids glanced up at the visible dent in the wall above the berth. That had to be a serious understatement.

“There was no permanent damage done. Don’t worry.” First Aid wound up the last of the cabling and hung it from the hook on the equipment station. He patted the berth. “Here, sit up for me.” Skids obeyed without any difficulty. His joints ached, but otherwise, everything operated more or less correctly as designed. First Aid ran him through a couple more physical tests, had him stand under his own power, and ran a final scan before adding a note to his file. “There you go,” he said. “Officially released, and you’ll be off-duty for three cycles, then on restricted duty for another four. Behave yourself. No engex for another week. Avoid unnecessary exertion. Come right back if anything seems off, okay?”

“Got it.”

“Great. Now shoo.” First Aid’s visor flashed in a wink. Skids let himself be hustled out into the medbay proper, where a handful of other mecha filled the berths. Several of them appeared to be waiting on parts: Dogfight was missing most of a wing panel; one of Hound’s optics was dark; Ambulon was reattaching plating to Pointblank’s lower leg. Lancet was programming the fabricator over in the corner. Despite the volume of patients, Ratchet was nowhere in evidence.

Skids wasn’t eager to get in anyone’s way. He took himself out into the hallway and turned instinctively in the direction of his hab suite, but indecision made him pause. Rest was all well and good, but what he really wanted to do was talk to Rung, and there was no time like the present.

He thought about sending a comm, but this seemed like a conversation to have face-to-face. He headed into the lift, instead, and down several decks. All along the corridor leading to Rung’s office, he tried to plan out what he intended to say.

Nothing brilliant came to mind.

He supposed that meant he should just wing it; he didn’t want his feelings to sound rehearsed. Rung was a little like a sentient lie detector, after all, and Skids wanted to avoid any hint of false charm or insincerity.

Rung’s office lay just ahead. Skids braced himself and forcibly calmed the flutter in his fuel tanks, before he looked up and realized that he needn’t have bothered. The light above the door shone a steady red. That indicated that Rung was currently in a session, and he definitely wouldn’t appreciate a disturbance. Feeling oddly at loose ends, Skids checked his chronometer and set an alarm for the end of the current shift. He could find something to do with himself until then.

He ended up at Swerve’s, of course, since he wouldn’t be cleared for active duty for another week. He tried to order engex and managed to be a little ashamed of himself when Swerve only stared blandly back at him from behind the counter.

“Plain energon for you,” the bartender said, “and anyone else who got out of medical less than four rotations ago.” He poured a glass and slid it across the counter. Skids caught it and eyed it with distaste. “Nice try, though. Ratchet’s still off duty, but I’m not gonna risk his temper. First Aid’s a lot scarier than I expected, anyway.”

Skids arched his optic ridges. “Ratchet’s still off duty?”

“I’m not even sure he’s conscious yet.” Swerve leaned forward with the familiar air of someone with a choice bit of gossip. “He and Drift were _both_ in surgery for hours after Ratchet’s heat, but no one will say why and Drift gets awfully Decepticonny if anyone asks about it, and if you know anything you are absolutely required, as my friend, to tell me!”

“I’m pretty sure friendship doesn’t work that way.” Skids sipped from his glass. “Besides, I know exactly nothing about anything. Especially anything related to Ratchet or Drift.”

Swerve’s visible disappointment lasted only for seconds before he began looking strangely sly. “Well. You know something.”

Skids swallowed. “Huh?”

“Don’t play innocent with me. You have _secrets.”_

“Probably, but I don’t remember any of them. In case you’ve forgotten.” Skids blinked back at him, increasingly uneasy in the face of Swerve’s widening smile.

“Yeah? Somehow I don’t think your amnesia extends to last week.”

Oh. _Oh._ Skids weighed his options and decided to continue playing dumb. “Things get pretty blurry after a point. Oil reservoir, lots of fighting...” He waved a dismissive hand. “You know.” Swerve _did_ know, because Skids had a vague memory that he had been there, in the oil reservoir, possibly punching Brawn in the face. Maybe he had imagined that part. Swerve was still functional, after all, and Skids doubted any Decepticon who had punched Brawn could say the same.

“There’s no way I remember more about this than you do,” Swerve said. His tone was unimpressed, but he was practically tying a cleaning cloth into knots between both hands. “Don’t pretend you don’t remember who took you home in the end. Err, who you carried home.”

Skids smiled, deliberately guileless. “Can’t guess what you’re asking me.”

Swerve twitched, but went back to cleaning the counter, giving the metal a lot more attention than it really deserved. “I’m just...I dunno. I mean, it’s just that I’m trying to imagine some things about that, and I just really...can’t.”

“Imagine some things about what?”

“Rung!” Swerve shouted, then visibly shut himself up when the mecha at the nearest table peered at them. “About Rung,” Swerve said, this time in more of a stage whisper.

Skids counted to five and drank from his glass before answering. “What about Rung?”

“What about—what do you think?!” Swerve slammed both hands onto the counter with a nearly subsonic wail of frustration. “Rung. You. _Rung._ He won! What happened after that? You two left and I couldn’t even get up until Ambulon came and reset all my relays and I have to know what happened after that, Skids! I’ve _got to know.”_ He vibrated like a diffusion grenade entering the final stage of meltdown.

Skids set his glass on the counter and touched his fingertips together. He narrowed his optics at Swerve. “If I tell you exactly one thing about it, will you go away and stop asking me increasingly pathetic questions?”

Swerve actually bounced up and down. Just a couple of times. _“Yes._ Maybe. Yes!”

“No, we are making a formal agreement here. Yes or nothing at all.”

“Yes, yes!” Swerve covered his mouth with both hands.

“All right.” Skids leaned close and lowered his voice. “It was good.” He almost stopped there, but he couldn’t quite help himself, because he wanted to tell someone—and that someone might as well be statistically likely to spread the word to any other curious parties. “It was _fantastic_ and I would do it _again.”_

Swerve made a strangled sound and his optics went comically wide behind his visor. “Seriously?” he squawked, somewhat muffled behind his hands. Skids leaned back again and took a long sip from his glass before answering with nothing but a grin. Swerve, meanwhile, stared silently back at him for so long that Skids started to wonder if the implications had broken him. After another several seconds, however, he lowered his hands to the counter and opened his mouth. “But—”

“Nope,” Skids interrupted. “We had a deal.”

“You can’t just sit there and tell me that Rung is some sort of—of _sex god_ and expect me to just...deal with that! Silently! With no follow-up questions!”

“And yet here we are.”

Skids finished the last of his very bland energon and held out the glass for a refill. He found himself unexpectedly hungry, which probably testified to First Aid’s warnings to take it easy. “You’re the absolute worst,” Swerve informed him as he returned the full glass.

“Yeah, a little bit.” Skids paused to drink. “I kind of...have a question of my own, though.”

“What’s that?”

Skids leaned closer, lowering his voice again. “I just want to find out how he did it.” His processor wasn’t likely to recover the data corrupted by the heat coding, and at this point, Skids didn’t exactly expect his damaged memory cores to improve. “Do you know?”

“How he won?” Swerve’s initial surprise stretched into the widest grin Skids had ever seen. “I can totally tell you a little something about that.”

By the time Swerve had finished his dramatic retelling—complete with purloined security camera footage—the bar had filled up. Chromedome, also recently released from the medbay, had joined them, and Rewind had hopped up onto the counter next to his conjunx.

“It’s always the quiet ones,” Chromedome said, watching the footage for the sixth time and wincing when Rung—so slim, so unassuming—flipped the switch. The video feed splashed blueish-white before the camera lens exploded and electrical overload shorted out the security system completely. The video went to static. Then it started again from the beginning, with Skids motionless in the oil and the battle royale raging in the background.

Rewind’s laugh was wicked. “Not always.”

Skids shook his head and pushed the datapad back across the counter. “Close enough, in this case.” The end-of-shift alarm he’d set had pinged a couple of times now, and he didn’t intend to be a coward when it counted. He slid off the stool and stretched his door panels with a wince. “Sorry to abandon you all, but I need to talk to him.”

Chromedome turned and leaned his back against the counter edge. “Already looking for a repeat performance?”

“Very funny.” Skids started for the door but paused in surprise when Rewind caught his wrist.

“Hey, just...” Rewind tilted his head to one side, visor dimming in a way Skids couldn’t easily interpret. “Just go slow,” he finally said. “But don’t give up.” He let go of Skids’s wrist with a little squeeze.

The gesture was probably supposed to be supportive. That uneasy flutter started up again in Skids’s fuel tanks, nevertheless. “...Right.”

This time, the trip down to Rung’s office seemed twice as long, and Skids’s systems had started tying themselves in knots by the time he reached the door. The light above it was off, but when Skids pressed the entry panel, it buzzed a negative. The screen scrolled a message about regular office hours and general contact information. Annoyed with himself for dithering so long at Swerve’s, Skids shifted his weight from foot to foot and considered where else Rung might go after a shift.

Hab suite seemed like the best bet. Too bad it was another long walk.

By the time he reached the right corridor, Skids had begun questioning how quickly he’d been released from medical. This probably qualified as the _unnecessary exertion_ First Aid had mentioned. Hopefully Rung was home; a ship-wide search was currently beyond Skids’s capabilities. He pressed the comm panel beside the door and waited.

No answer.

“Oh, come on,” he muttered. He tried again, without much hope, and he waited far past any reasonable amount of time before deactivating his optics with a sigh of surrender. He rested a hip against the wall—just for support, definitely not because he was fighting unexpected fatigue—and activated his comm line. He still didn’t want to talk about this over comms, but maybe he could at least find out where Rung actually was and avoid anymore walking. The line hummed for only an instant before connecting. Skids’s apprehension curdled into disappointment when a pre-recorded message began to play.

_::Hello, you’ve reached Rung, ship’s psychiatrist. Unfortunately, if you are receiving this message, I am either off duty or currently with a patient. If this is an emergency, please ping the following frequency for immediate response.::_

Skids considered it, if only for a moment. But no, wanting a chat wasn’t an emergency, medical or otherwise, and on the distant chance that Rung really was with a patient outside of regular hours, Skids wouldn’t dare disturb him.

_::Otherwise, please leave a message and I will return it as soon as possible.::_

Allowing himself a moment of frustration, Skids kept his message short. _::Hey there. Released from the medbay and hoping to see you. Ping me when you’re free.::_ That didn’t seem too needy or too distant, he thought. He hoped.

He wasn’t some sort of newbuild and this wasn’t rejection. Rung was his friend.

He could be patient.

~~~~~

His patience lasted through the next four shift rotations. By the end of the fifth, Rung hadn’t responded to his message, shown up at Swerve’s, or been available in his office outside of scheduled appointments. Skids had never thought of Rung as particularly crafty, but the entire experience of his heat and its aftermath was challenging every single one of his assumptions about their resident psychiatrist.

Well, not _every_ assumption. He still assumed that Rung was the same gentle, considerate mech he had been before and during Skids’s heat. He also assumed that this new skittishness had something to do with Rung’s own past, and little to do with Skids himself. Unfortunately, those assumptions did nothing to ease the frustration of once again standing outside a locked door.

_Don’t give up,_ Rewind had said, and Skids refused to surrender to pessimism. They would work it out, whatever that might mean, because they cared about each other.

Sighing, he rested his forehead against the locked barrier of Rung’s door and shuttered his optics. If anything, Rung’s determined avoidance of him seemed to demonstrate just how _much_ he cared.

~~~~~~~~~~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The loud fight outside Skids's room is a reference to the missing scene in _The Chemicals Between Us_ where Ratchet wakes up in the medbay, panics because he can't feel Drift's field, and takes Ultra Magnus hostage until the arrival of Drift himself sends Ratchet back into stasis.


	5. Part 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ratchet is The Worst Patient, but at least he has good advice. Rung continues to be a self-sabotaging idiot.

Part 5

Rung rather thought that he was taking his life in his hands, asking to visit Ratchet in the medbay. After all, the last time he had seen Ratchet, the CMO had been semi-coherent, fully panicked, and creating a hostage situation in which he had played the role of both perpetrator and victim. Mopping up the mess afterwards had been no picnic. Rung doubted that Ratchet’s mood had significantly improved after a week on strict bedrest, but he trusted Ratchet’s expertise and discretion above that of any other medical professional on the _Lost Light._

First Aid turned away from his dour contemplation of a requisition form and flickered his visor at Rung in surprise. “Oh! Are you still on the shift schedule? I’m sorry, I don’t actually need extra help.”

“No, no. Although I’m glad to hear that.” Rung linked both hands in front of him and glanced around the empty medbay.

“So am I,” First Aid said, the exhaustion in his voice undercut by a note of vicious satisfaction. The glow of his visor narrowed on Rung. “What can I do for you, then? Are you experiencing any sort of aftereffects? Soreness, dizziness, irritability?” Rung felt the distinctive itch of a shallow-grade medical scan sweep over his frame.

“Actually, I was hoping that I might visit Ratchet.”

First Aid’s visor flashed again. “...Er, because you haven’t been insulted or shouted at yet today? Are you sure you’re feeling all right? Maybe you’d like a deep imaging processor scan.” His visor dimmed to a sly glitter. “I suggest a full systems flush, actually, if you’re looking for a more pleasant way to spend your afternoon.”

“Oh, I see.” Rung hid his smile behind one hand.

Ratchet’s growl echoed through the connecting door at the back of the medbay. “I can _hear_ you, as well you know.”

“Oh, can you?” First Aid chirped in return. He lowered his voice again and beckoned Rung toward the open doorway. “Last chance to change your mind.”

Fearless, Rung chuckled and preceded him into the room. Ratchet’s berth was one of the better models, and someone had raised it to sit mostly upright, letting him reach the vidscreen controls and the currently-empty side table with ease. The desk at the other end of the room was similarly bare, and it gave the entire room an eerily spartan austerity. Ratchet himself looked healthy enough at the moment, but the welds were still visible along the sides of his chest and above one optic. They were sobering reminders of how terribly close he had come to deactivation.

Ratchet crossed both arms over his chest and scowled at First Aid. “Thought you said I didn't deserve any visitors.”

“What I _said_ was that any visitors didn't deserve your treatment of them.”

Against all laws of physics, Ratchet's scowl grew even deeper. “I have been a ray of fragging sunshine for the last six rust-ridden days I’ve been stuck in this berth, and anyone who claims otherwise is committing outright slander and deserves to be kicked in the aft.”

First Aid slanted a glance at Rung, who had pulled a chair up beside the berth and was settling himself into it. “This is probably the best you’re going to get.”

“I knew the job was dangerous when I took it.”

“Get out of my hab,” Ratchet said, clearly directing his rancor at First Aid, who lifted both hands in melodramatic surrender and backed out the door. “Ugh. They haven’t even left me anything to throw.”

Rung suspected that was a lesson learned from experience, but he was also too committed to self-preservation to say so. “That would probably fall under the category of physical exertion, which I’m sure you’re supposed to be avoiding.” Ratchet’s gimlet gaze turned on him, but he only smiled, benign. He never needed to feign concern for the mecha on this ship. “How are you feeling?”

“Oh, just splendid.” Ratchet rolled his optics. “How do you think?”

“I wouldn’t dare to presume.”

That earned him a suspicious narrowing of the optics, and Ratchet uncrossed his arms to hold up a finger in warning. “Rung, know that I am speaking with all the civility implied by our friendship when I say that I categorically do _not_ want to talk about what happened.”

Rung spread his hands. “That's fair and I’m not here to ask it of you.” He also wouldn’t have a leg to stand on in that argument, but Ratchet needn’t know anything about his own communication failures. Do as I say, not as I do—the therapist’s secret screed. “I’m here for...well, I’m hoping for your professional opinion.” He cast a sideways glance at the open door, but the medbay was still empty of patients, and First Aid was visibly busy organizing supplies on the far side of the room. Rung lowered his voice, nevertheless. “Call it a consult. I know you're meant to be entirely off-duty—”

“And it’s driving me straight out of my mind,” Ratchet muttered.

“I thought you might appreciate a distraction, yes.”

Ratchet eyed him. “I'm listening.”

Now that they had come to the point, Rung found himself shying away—coming at it obliquely. He retrieved a datapad from his subspace. “In your experience, how often does a mid-size utility vehicle go into heat? Once every two million years?” Rung knew plenty about coping mechanisms and the indications of post-traumatic stress, but he understood far less about actual frame specifications. Ratchet could supply the missing pieces.

“Maybe as often as every one and a half million years, depending on the build,” Ratchet said. He narrowed his optics again. “Is this about Skids?”

Rung crossed one leg over the other and couldn't quite hold Ratchet's gaze. “That's why I'm asking you in particular, yes.” Anyone who had seen the footage from the oil reservoir's security feed would know exactly about whom Rung was asking; anyone but Ratchet might be far less professional about the answer. Rung saw little need to give more fodder to the gossips.

“Closer to two million, then.”

It was the answer Rung had expected, but not the one he'd wanted. He shuttered his optics, briefly, before activating them again and switching on his datapad. “I estimate the first was just before or soon after you met him as one of the Academy's outliers. Right before the war began.” He made a minor edit to a line of text. “Two million years later would be mid-war, when even the Special Ops files go blank. Missing in action for half a million years. Then he suddenly shows up again in the sealed records of the Diplomatic Corps, under Prowl.”

“Something happened during his heat.” Ratchet pointed a finger at him. “You wouldn’t be picking so hard at this, otherwise. You know better.”

Rung leaned back against the chair and slipped off his lenses so that he could rub at the bridge of his nose. “Yes. Of course, something happened.” He tipped his head back with a slow sigh. “A flashback of some sort, caused by one particular position. He couldn’t tell me anything about it, afterwards, but something—maybe in his processor itself, maybe in his spark—something still remembers.” How must it be for Skids, to know that he had survived something too terrible to recall, but to suffer the consequences of it nevertheless? Pain without context; fear without cause. Little wonder that Skids was obsessed with all the blank spaces in his memory. “Whatever happened during those missing years is relevant,” Rung said. He replaced his lenses and straightened his back.

“Skids was at Grindcore,” Ratchet said flatly. “Maybe that was classified information, back in the day. But you might as well know it for sure.”

Rung stared at the screen, watching his thumbs stroke along the edges of the pad. “I had guessed. I spoke to Chromedome, before I came to you.” The former mnemosurgeon had declined to share the details of what he had seen inside Skids's processor, but his instructions had been crystal clear.

_Under no circumstances is he ready to remember any of it. Not now._

_Maybe not ever._

“The dates match,” Rung murmured. “Roughly.” Grief welled up in his chest until it threatened to choke his intake when he thought of Skids, alone, assaulted, vulnerable in the worst way while trapped in one of the worst places in the universe. The commandant of Grindcore had eventually become Tarn. All of Rung’s experience and imagination combined to paint a terrible picture of the tortures Skids might have endured under the mech who now reigned over the DJD. No one deserved that, but especially not Skids, who had done nothing but help others since almost the moment Rung had met him.

Miserably, Rung could see his own actions illuminated in the unforgiving glare of ethical standards. Heat coding or not, he was responsible for his choices. He had fought dirty in a way no one on this ship would have expected, and he had manipulated the ending of the heat fight to suit his own ends. He had wanted Skids more than he had wanted to play fair. The coding had made sure that Skids would want him, too.

He had taken advantage of that, when Skids was unable to refuse.

Worst of all, he knew how that felt—knew how it twisted the self-image of the victim and undermined any sense of personal worth. “I used him,” Rung said with optics shuttered tight. “I cheated and...I used him, just like—” His vocoder clicked; he couldn’t finish.

“Hey.” Ratchet’s hand closed around his. “Stop it.”

The unexpected touch made Rung reactivate his optics with a jolt. Ratchet stared back at him with a fierce compassion that Rung had never seen before on that usually sardonic face. Maybe this was the depth of emotion that Drift had perceived beneath Ratchet’s gruff exterior.

“You know as well as I do that playing to win isn’t exactly a sin during a courtship fight,” Ratchet said. He sighed, and the edges where their fields overlapped tinged with regret. “Besides, a heat frags up your processor like nothing else. Prophylaxis exhaustion, glitched coding, they just make everything worse. You know what happened to me.” He paused. “What happened to Drift.”

Touched, Rung quirked his lips but doubted that he achieved a smile. “Are you offering to talk about it?”

“Anything but,” Ratchet drawled. He withdrew his hand. “What I'm saying is that beating yourself up about whatever happened isn't going to solve a damn thing.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“Put it to practice, then.” Ratchet rubbed a hand against the weld above his optic, realized what he was doing, and lowered his hand back to the berth with conscious effort. “I’m the last person on this ship to advocate for _talking out your feelings,”_ he said, complete with air quotes, “but at least Skids might do you the kindness of actually speaking to you. Instead of, say, ignoring your existence entirely. Just an example.”

This time, Rung pressed his hand over Ratchet's in shared comfort. “He'll come around.”

Ratchet snorted, but his expression clouded over with unexpected vulnerability. “Maybe. Is that what you want me to tell Skids, when he comes looking for you?”

“That isn’t going to happen,” Rung said over the lump in his intake. He deactivated his datapad and returned it to his subspace.

“I disagree with you, but that’s nothing new.”

Rung stood, suddenly all too eager to leave this conversation despite having begun it in the first place. “You are certainly entitled to your own opinions. You’ll forgive me, but I really must be going. I’ve disrupted your recovery more than enough for one day.”

“Oh, of course. This little chat was almost too much effort for my systems.” Rung had turned toward the door, but he could practically sense Ratchet rolling his optics. “It’s funny,” Ratchet continued, although his tone suggested pity instead of amusement. “I’d never have pegged you for a coward.”

Rung’s spinal strut stiffened, but he only paused for a moment, and his voice remained artificially calm. “Then you were wrong.”

He tried not to rush and kept his field gathered close, but his biolights flickered erratically and he couldn’t quite level out his ventilations before he had crossed the medbay and punched the door panel with a little more force than necessary. First Aid stared after him, visor flashing in alarm before narrowing into a glitter as he turned in the direction of Ratchet’s habsuite door.

“What in the Pit did you _say_ to him?” First Aid demanded, sounding thoroughly offended on Rung’s behalf. Rung could hear the snarl, but not distinguish the words, of Ratchet’s answer just before the medbay door slid shut.

Just another thing he could feel guilty about, Rung supposed.

The ship was in the middle of its evening shift cycle, and Rung found himself wandering mostly empty corridors with no particular destination in mind. He could go back to his hab, where he had spent the vast majority of his recent off-duty hours, but he could barely endure his own company anymore. All of his circular thoughts revolved around his own disgust with himself. Imagining the righteous disgust Skids must feel towards him in return made his tanks churn and his chest ache.

He had been avoiding Swerve’s, but for once, the near-certainty of being ignored in a crowd of other mecha was oddly comforting. Of course, the odds of Skids being there were probably better than average.

Rung supposed that he could simply slip back out the door if so, with no one the wiser.

Light and noise poured out into the corridor when Rung pressed the door panel. A quick glance around the bar showed no sign of Skids or any of their closer acquaintances—just Swerve behind the counter and a couple of larger groups clustered around the tables. Rung found a spot in a far corner, where he could keep his back to the wall and watch the door at the same time. After a minute or two, Swerve slipped out from behind the bar and headed over. He seemed almost hesitant, and when he finally reached the side of Rung’s table, he spent so long staring in silence that Rung began to feel both seriously concerned and vaguely uncomfortable.

Professionalism overrode discomfort. “Swerve? Are you all right?”

Swerve jolted and began speaking in one long, frantic jumble. “Of course Rung I’m great hey there Rung how are you we haven’t seen you around here in a while hope everything’s good would you like a drink maybe a spritzer or something or hey how about a Tragic Dream does that sound okay great I’ll grab it for you!”

Swerve fled.

Baffled, Rung flickered his optics and debated whether or not to ask a few probing questions when Swerve came back. He ultimately determined that Swerve could speak for himself if he wanted help. Pushing therapy onto a friend at their place of business simply wasn’t done, and besides, Rung was meant to be both off duty and easily overlooked. To that end, he pulled out a datapad and opened the latest mystery novel in a long-running series.

Swerve returned with a drink in hand. It was layered in shades of blue and fizzing around the top rim of the glass. Rung braced himself for another onslaught of chatter, but Swerve just set the drink in front of him and chuckled awkwardly for a moment before stumbling backwards towards the bar.

Rung opened his scheduling software and made a note to advertise more open appointment slots.

Returning his attention to the present, he sipped at his drink and found it pleasant enough. It was neither too sweet nor too strong, and despite his deep-rooted tension, he felt the stressed components of his shoulders begin to relax after a few minutes had passed.

That tension returned tenfold when a heavy weight landed on the floor just to his right.

Rung couldn’t quite swallow, because he already knew the source. He turned his head to see Skids looming over him with optics glowing like divine judgment. Caught equally between admiration and frustration, Rung stared up at him. Either he had literally materialized out of nowhere—and considering his friendship with Brainstorm, that might be possible—or, more likely... “Did you just come out of the ceiling vent?”

Skids rubbed at the back of his neck. “I’m sort of known for that, aren’t I?”

He moved to the other side of the table and his bulk blocked the rest of the room. For just an instant, Rung's spark juddered against the inside of his chest. He realized that he was literally bracing himself—feet flattened against the floor, hands clenched around the edge of his seat—as if Skids might reach out and strike him with something worse than words. But he simply settled into the opposite chair with a sigh. He wasn't pinning Rung in or trapping him in the corner. Of course he wasn't; he would never. With a conscious effort, Rung returned his hands to the tabletop and folded them carefully around his glass. He struggled to keep the shame out of his field.

Skids waved at the bar, and a minute later, Swerve arrived with a glass of something visibly bland. He set it down and took a step back from the table, but he didn’t quite go anywhere. Instead, he looked back and forth between Rung and Skids, expression weirdly rapt, until Skids cleared his intake with a pointed cough. Swerve frowned at him, opened his mouth as if to say something...then apparently thought better of it and trudged back to the bar with disappointment clouding his field.

Rung should have asked what that was about, but he couldn’t bring himself to say anything at all. He tapped his foot against the leg of his chair, instead, and waited in anxious misery until Skids finally broke the silence himself.

“I’ve spent a very long set of cycles looking for you.”

Rung swallowed so hard that his intake spasmed. “Here I am.”

“Here you are,” Skids echoed. He pressed his fingertips together. “And I’m going to bet you’re only still here because you didn’t see me come through the door.”

Rung couldn’t quite meet his gaze anymore, and he said nothing.

“I bribed a few people to tell me where you were,” Skids added. “And I shouldn’t have bothered, since Swerve just commed me one long _loud_ string of gibberish the second he saw you. Luckily, I speak fluent Swerve.”

Wordless, Rung stared at the blue condensation on his glass.

“Are you going to tell me why you’re avoiding me?” Skids waited, more patiently than Rung deserved, but when no answer was forthcoming, a little exasperation slipped through. “Did you want me to guess?”

Rung shook his head. He wasn’t about to claim that he hadn’t been avoiding this confrontation, because he might be a coward, but he had never been a liar to anyone but himself. At the very least, he could have done Skids the courtesy of answering his messages. Especially the last one, sent two days ago, which he hadn’t been able to play more than once because of the ache in Skids’s recorded voice.

_Hey. Talk to me._

He hadn’t been capable of it then; he wasn’t capable of it now. He felt dizzy, nauseated, as if his gyros had destabilized and his frame was reeling through empty space. Part of him expected his proximity sensors to start screaming—_too close, too close, impact inevitable, damage calculations underway._ Primus. He hadn’t been so frightened since Overlord had blocked the ship’s corridor and laughed at the combined weaponry of the entire crew.

“Do you regret it that much?” Skids sounded terribly sad.

“Yes, I regret it,” Rung whispered, an unwilling confession pulled from beneath his crumbling self-control. “I regret it for you, because...” Because Skids could have had anyone, anyone better. Because Skids had deserved to choose, had more than deserved the decision that Drift had fought to give Ratchet. “Aren’t you angry?” he managed at length.

From the corner of his optic lens, he saw Skids tilt his helm ever so slightly to one side. “Do you want me to be angry with you?”

“No,” Rung said, too quickly.

“No. No, you just think I _should_ be. You think you know better than I do, how I feel.”

“What? No.” Offense finally allowed him to look Skids full in the face. “Of course not.”

Skids looked back at him for a long, uncomfortable moment. Incongruently, he didn’t look angry in the slightest, but that exasperation from earlier lingered in his sigh. He picked up his drink, then seemed to remember that it was nothing but plain energon and set it down again. “You...” He paused. “You have the most overdeveloped guilt complex of anyone I’ve ever met.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Rung.” Skids arched an optic ridge. “I once saw you apologize to a bar stool for accidentally walking into it.”

Rung linked his fingers together and stared determinedly at anywhere else. “I wasn’t aware it was a bar stool until afterwards.”

“And then you apologized to Swerve.”

Well, yes. He had. He sighed, and his shoulders creaked with tension when he looked at Skids again and saw the knowing gleam in those optics. “Did you have a point?” Incivility, the last resort of the defensive and the desperate, and Rung was so ashamed of himself but frantic to escape this conversation. Guilt gnawed at the inside of his fuel tank and nausea roiled through his field before he could fully repress it.

“I think I've made it. But I can spell it out, if you like.”

Actually, Rung wouldn't like that at all. “I should go. I should...”

Skids shut him up by resting his elbow joints against the tabletop and leaning forward over his crossed arms. His optics were piercing in the dim light. “My real point is that you ought to stop feeling like you took advantage of me.”

Just hearing the words aloud, spoken so plainly, choked off Rung's intake and tied his fuel lines into knots. He shuttered his optics and pressed one hand over his mouth. He was not, _was not _going to make a fool of himself like this, but his vocoder hiccuped with static and his shoulders trembled despite all his efforts.

“Rung. Hey.”

“I'm so sorry,” he whispered.

“Tell me why.”

Rung shook his head, too many apologies crowding his intake, but he was better than this, more capable than this—he knew how to explain himself. He cycled a couple of steadying ventilations until his shaking eased. “I know how it feels.” He lowered his hands to his lap and let his fingers clench against his knees. “To be...to be used.”

For a long, terrible moment, Skids was silent.

The ambient sounds seemed loud. Rung could hear the buzz of other conversations, the clinking of glass from the bar, even the whine of his own systems under stress. He couldn’t sense so much as a whisper from Skids’s field. Apprehension crushed around the casing of his spark.

Finally, Skids pushed aside his drink and stood, and Rung hung his head. He wasn’t sure what might happen next, but he undoubtedly deserved it. “Hey,” Skids said, gently enough that Rung looked up at him in reflex and found him holding out a hand. “C’mon. Let’s talk about this. Somewhere a little more private, I think.”

Once again, Skids was offering him a hand in invitation. _Come with me._

Rung didn’t know how to interpret it, but he was powerless against it, as always. In any case, Skids deserved an honest apology for more offenses than Rung wanted to count. He let Skids pull him to his feet. “Wherever you like,” he said in surrender. Skids didn’t quite smile, but he gave Rung’s hand a squeeze. When he turned and made for the exit, Rung followed.

~~~~~~~~~~


	6. Part 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for the unintentionally long wait, everyone! And thank you so, so much for all your kudos and comments and encouragement along the way. I really can't express just how much it means to me. <3333 This ship is small, but it is mighty.

Part 6

Skids kept his pace slow, but Rung lagged a step or two behind him anyway. Whenever Skids glanced back, Rung looked as if he were trying to disappear purely on the strength of his own determination. Not a promising beginning to this conversation, but Skids wasn’t about to let Rung wriggle out of it—he’d wasted too much time lurking outside locked doors and sending unanswered messages to feel particularly merciful. He hadn’t let go of Rung’s hand yet, either, and while that might have been over the top under normal circumstances, right now, caution seemed justified.

Unfortunately, he also had no idea where they were going. He didn’t often look to escape the company of other mecha, and when he did...

He usual choice for solitude was the oil reservoir. Which was _right_ out.

Rung came to his rescue. “Let’s go to the observation deck on this level. E-26. It should be empty enough.”

It was completely empty, in fact. Once they were inside, Skids finally released his grip and felt some of his tension ease when Rung stayed put rather than making a run for it. Rung wrapped his arms around himself, instead, and made himself even smaller than usual. He looked so miserable that Skids took pity on them both. “C’mon. Sit with me.” He chose the nearest arrangement of couches and took a seat, patting the cushion next to him.

After a moment, Rung obeyed. He was light enough of frame that the padding barely dipped under his weight, even when he pulled his legs up to one side.

Skids cycled a ventilation and chose his words more carefully than usual. “I need you to stop deciding how I should feel,” he began, but he realized that wasn’t quite all of it. “Stop deciding how I _do_ feel, too. You’re guessing wrong and that’s hurting us both, Eyebrows.”

When Rung looked up, the overhead lights reflected off the circular lenses over his optics. He was rendered unreadable except for the downward turn of his mouth. His voice trembled. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m not angry,” Skids said. He did his best to broadcast sincerity through his field. He wasn’t angling for additional apologies; he wanted to know what was driving Rung’s unbearable guilt. “Not at you. Not at the whole...” He struggled for a description that was neither too vague nor too crass and gave up after several seconds. “The whole situation.” Reaching out, he rested a hand on Rung’s knee. “I don’t regret it, either, so get that idea out of your head. I don’t regret that it was you.” He squeezed, lightly, and let go. “But I’m pretty damn frustrated that you refused to talk to me about any of it.”

Rung hung his head. “You deserve better, yes.”

“I don’t disagree,” Skids said, voice warm to keep the sting out of the words. Rung flinched, nevertheless. “But I’m still not angry. Could you do me the courtesy of believing me, this time?”

Biting at his lower lip, Rung nodded.

“Okay.” That was a start, at least. “Now you need to tell me what you meant. When you talked about being used.”

Rung stiffened and pulled in an unsteady ventilation. His entire posture changed; all his plating quivered. Skids had to admire the overall effect—he had never guessed a mech could communicate the words _I would rather not talk about this ever _through nothing but the set of his shoulders. Nevertheless, he had faith in Rung, and despite the last several days, he still didn't think of Rung as a coward when it counted most.

After several seconds of silence, his patience was rewarded. “There was a colleague,” Rung began. “A...friend. This was in Iacon—before the war, even before the Functionists—when I had an office at Allyon and the Boulevard of Swords.” Rung spoke in an eerily even tone, but his hands twisted together in his lap. “I first met him at the university. He was very young, but so passionate about the work, and once he graduated, he set up his practice in the same building. Different floor.” Rung stared down at his hands. “We spent a great deal of time together in those days. I was...flattered,” he confessed, as if enjoying someone's attention were a cardinal sin. “He seemed interested in...me.”

Those pauses said more than the words themselves, Skids would bet, but he only nodded, encouraging. “What was his name?”

“Froid.”

Skids arched his optical ridges; he had heard of Froid. In fact, Rung had loaned him a couple of books by Froid, back when Skids had been new to the ship and desperate to understand his own broken brain module. He hadn’t made a dedicated study of psychology, even at the time, and he hadn’t found the reading material particularly helpful. “I read that. Too much emphasis on interface programming, I think.” Some troubling implications of hypnosis as a possible precursor to mnemosurgery, too.

“Most people have heard of him.” Rung smiled, humorless, and one of his thumbs rubbed against the other, fidgety, repetitive. He eventually cleared his intake and spoke again. “I had never gone into heat before. And yes, I realize how very peculiar that is,” he added. His mouth narrowed into a grim line. “The Functionists made that painfully clear to me, later on.”

On the rare occasions that Rung had previously confided in Skids, he had alluded to the indignities he’d experienced under the Functionist regime. Skids had long suspected that Rung was downplaying literal torture as simple discomfort.

They should probably talk about that, too. Some other time.

“I wasn't exactly a new build, even then. And I had talked plenty of patients through heat complications, as if I understood, but when it happened to me... I didn't even recognize it. I couldn't imagine why I was so anxious, so short-tempered. Even with Froid.”

“I’m guessing he knew why.”

“Yes.” Rung shifted his weight, plainly uncomfortable, but he continued. “For a long time, afterwards, I convinced myself it was an accident. I didn’t want to imagine that someone I’d trusted could do something so...calculated.”

Skids hated to imagine it, too, because Rung was wary despite the empathetic, amiable exterior he so carefully cultivated. Rung’s trust was a gift rarely given. “How did he do it?”

Rung shuttered his optics. “I thought I was ill, so I canceled my last two appointments. While I was packing up, the evacuation alarms went off—some sort of mechanical emergency—but when I checked the logs later, it was a false alarm. When I tried to leave, my office door was jammed. I suppose he did it, somehow, when he left after visiting me that morning, but I wasn't exactly capable of investigation at that point. Or later, when he finally returned.”

Skids felt a little sick himself. It had been horribly deliberate—locking Rung in, evacuating the building, derailing any fight before it could even begin. “How long did he leave you there?”

“Hours.” Rung’s shoulders lifted in a shrug. “I can’t quite say. My chronometer was already affected. By the time he came back, I would have done anything he asked. And honestly? I did. I did it all, willingly. When I imprinted, I was glad it was him. That it was someone I cared for, who seemed to care for me, and he was so—so concerned, so worried for me, when he finally got the door open, and I believed it. I believed _him.” _Bitterness frosted the edges of the words, and Rung cleared his intake with a cough of static before continuing. “It was consensual.” His slim fingers twisted together in his lap, belying the even tone of his voice. “He never hurt me. I was...for a time afterward, I was grateful. I _thanked_ him.”

The sour note of self-loathing in Rung’s voice made Skids curl his fingers hard against the plating of his own thighs. He wanted so badly to reach out and offer reassurance that he didn’t dare.

“Before he allowed me to overload, he wanted me to say...” Rung faltered. Then his voice resumed in a dreadful, _professional_ monotone. “There were things he made me say. About myself. They weren’t flattering.”

“They weren’t true,” Skids murmured.

That seemed to shatter Rung, when nothing else had thus far. “I know,” he said, shoulders shaking with suppressed emotion. For the first time, his field escaped his control, and it lashed momentarily around him in a swell of despair that chilled Skids down to his struts. In another instant, Rung had wrenched it back beneath his own plating. “I know that now,” he whispered. “But I didn’t, for a long time afterwards.”

He slipped off the lenses to rub at the inner corners of his optics. Without them, he seemed raw—angular and somehow brittle at the edges.

“I was so afraid,” he said. “That I had done that to you.”

“Rung...” Skids shook his head, aching at the thought. His memories blurred, overlapping, but he knew he hadn’t felt _that._ Not hurt, not humiliated, never worthless. “You told me how _good_ I was.” The only embarrassing part had been how much he had wanted that reassurance—and how hard he had overloaded on the wave of it, straight from Rung’s spark.

“You are,” Rung said, quietly fierce. “Oh, my dear, you _are.”_ Incongruently, that despair spilled over again, brimming over the edges of his field.

Skids shook his head, because he didn’t quite believe that, but he knew one thing for certain. “So are you.” In his experience, no one cruel or indifferent could have treated him with such consideration.

He thought back over the best mecha he had ever known—the ones he had admired, the ones who had made him want to do better, to _be_ better—and he recognized the common core of kindness that united them all. His own first heat was still a rare, crystal-clear memory. Shockwave had taken care of him then, had devoted all that intellect and empathy toward blowing his mind, and had so thoroughly succeeded that Skids hadn't imagined anything could rival the experience. Maybe he had let nostalgia cloud his recollection, but he had always been guilty of putting Shockwave on a pedestal.

“I think there's a pretty wide gulf between taking advantage of someone and taking care of someone,” Skids said. “And I think that you took care of me.” He was sure of it.

Rung looked up at him at last, and the skepticism in his bare optics hurt to see.

“I also think that Froid did hurt you.” Skids was sure of that, too, but he doubted that Rung would appreciate anyone telling him how to feel about his own history. “Maybe not physically, but we both know that isn’t the only way that counts.”

A visible shudder traveled up the length of Rung’s back; it rattled the superfluous wheel demanded by a regime long dead. They both carried around their ghosts. Rung settled his lenses back into place and focused his optics on Skids’s face before he spoke. “You say that you don’t regret it. But you weren’t given a choice. If someone had given that to you...who would you have chosen?”

Skids swallowed. His memories were fragmented, but he could too easily recapture that sense of creeping dread—the foreboding, the claustrophobia, of something inescapable and unwanted approaching. Would he have chosen anyone? The only thing he had consciously wanted at the beginning of this ship-wide disaster was the prophylaxis that Ambulon had administered. After that, nothing had mattered until he had woken up with Rung’s touch on his forehead and the realization that he’d been given an unexpected gift. “I’m not sure,” he admitted.

Nothing that he had experienced at Rung’s hands had felt like coercion or manipulation. _Benediction_ was a better word.

Or maybe _bliss._

“Maybe it shouldn’t matter,” he said.

Rung’s eyebrows shot up. “Of course it should matter—”

“I know who I’d choose now.”

Rung’s eyebrows lifted fractionally higher. It wasn’t quite the ardent response that Skids had been hoping for, but he would take it.

“Would you...” Skids paused, wondering how to ask without accidentally phrasing it like some sort of proposition. He gave up and offered Rung his open arms. “Would you come here?”

Rung visibly hesitated. The barest edge of his field fluctuated against Skids’s fingertips and whispered uncertainty, regret, longing. Then he sighed, the harsh lines of his shoulders relaxing, and he scooted across the cushion between them before settling over Skids’s lap. Skids wrapped an arm around his back to offer a little support.

“We’re okay,” Skids said. He met Rung’s optics, and while he lacked Rung’s subtle skill with field manipulation, he nevertheless tried to communicate total sincerity. He followed that with a surge of admiration, a flicker of hope.

After another hesitation, Rung’s field brushed back against his own. Skids felt a pulse of something gentle and genuine, a sense of equalizing pressure, a balance like two hands touching at the fingertips. That flicker of hope steadied between them. “I am sorry,” Rung murmured. “Truly.” His field smoothed out and rounded at the edges; Skids had never guessed that _honesty_ had a certain shape and weight. “My insecurities have nothing to do with you.” His mouth twisted into a little smile. “A decent psychologist should recognize projecting, even when he’s the one doing it.”

“I’m thinking we ought to give up on the idea that anyone could have survived the last few million years without suffering some sort of deep-seated trauma.”

Rung actually laughed—a wobbly sound, but still a victory from Skids’s perspective. “It does seem unlikely, doesn't it?” He shifted his weight, just enough to settle them more comfortably against each other, and Skids let his hands slide down to curve over Rung’s hips. Not holding him in place—just holding on. Rung draped his forearms over Skids’s shoulders, holding onto him in return.

“We’ve talked a bit about my feelings,” Skids said. Rung could probably sense the ripple of trepidation through their fields, but Skids didn’t try to hide from him. “You didn’t exactly have a choice, either. What would you have chosen? If you could?”

Rung’s optics flickered in a startled reset. “Me?” This time, his little smile was real, and his field slid over Skids’s like a caress. “Oh, dearest,” he said. Something in Skids went liquid at the endearment. “I’m not exactly an enigma. Not when it comes to you and how I feel. Surely you can guess.”

Skids vented a chuckle of relief. “Guessing hasn’t served us very well.”

“I wouldn’t choose to be anywhere else,” Rung said. His voice was low, but the words carried an edge, like a promise of something dark and hot and sweet. “And oh, how I’ve wanted you.”

Skids leaned up and pressed his lips to Rung's forehead. When he started to pull away, Rung caught him with both hands, fingers splayed on either side of his helm. Rung tipped his face downwards, lips parted, optics shining, and Skids abandoned any half-formed worries about propriety or taking things slow. The kiss they shared was chaste; both of them were a week away from the reactivation of their interface protocols. Even so, Skids would hardly call himself passionless, and the warm enthusiasm of Rung's response suggested that he felt the same.

When they eased apart, Skids couldn’t suppress a grin so wide that Rung’s eyebrows arched. “What is it?”

“Thought it might just be the coding,” Skids said. “But you taste the same.”

Something dim in Rung’s optics sparked, relit, and warmed into brilliance. The glow at the center of his chest brightened. For just a moment, the atmosphere around them hummed with resonance—a major chord, a harmony so familiar that Skids felt his sparkbeat double-skip to fall into rhythm—and then the sensation gradually faded. It was just Rung, with his hands linked at the back of Skids’s neck, with his weight barely a suggestion over Skids’s thighs, but it was more than enough.

~~~~~~~~~~ End ~~~~~~~~~~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Froid: *approaches Rung with long, creepy arms outstretched* How good to see you again, my fr—  
Skids: *punches him*  
Froid: Um. Ow. Have we, err, have we met?  
Skids: No. Pleasure to meet you. *punches him again*
> 
> ...There will probably be more in this continuity, because I am incapable of leaving things alone.


End file.
